Silhouette-oriented gray font generation

Abstract

A method, computer graphical user interface tool, and computer-readable medium for generating a set of characters for display in gray scale are provided, wherein each character comprises one or more strokes / glyphs, and each stroke / glyph is defined in silhouette-oriented representation. The method includes generally six steps. First, a set of characters is displayed, wherein each character comprises one or more strokes / glyphs, and all of the strokes / glyphs are represented by a set of basic strokes / glyphs, each basic stroke / glyph topographically representing a set of similarly-shaped strokes / glyphs. Second, each basic stroke / glyph is defined in silhouette-oriented representation. Third, each stroke / glyph forming each character is defined in silhouette-oriented representation. Fourth, the set of characters is rendered in gray scale. Fifth, the proper appearance of the characters is verified. Sixth, if the appearance is not satisfactory, the method returns to the second step and repeats the subsequent steps until the proper appearance of the characters is verified.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to digital representations of typographic characters or other symbols, and more particularly, to a system, method, and computer-readable medium for generating silhouette-oriented gray fonts.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Many font generating systems exist for generating Asian character fonts (“Asian fonts”). An Asian font is composed of a large number of ideographs that represent the characters in the Asian language. Asian languages may include thousands of characters. For example, the Chinese language includes over twenty-thousand distinct characters.[0003]One conventional computer technique for generating character patterns in an Asian font uses font outlines. This system is described in “PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook” by Adobe Systems, Inc. (Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1985). In this method, the outline of a character pattern is stored as a collection of straight lines and curves. There are some disadvantages ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The present invention provides a system, method, and computer-readable medium for generating a silhouette-oriented gray font that can be displayed on both binary-image dot matrix screens and gray level screens. The method involves defining a set of basic strokes in silhouette-oriented representation and assigning a silhouette code to each basic stroke to define the portion(s) of the basic stroke that will be subjected to a gray value calculation. The method also includes rendering characters by rendering the outline of each stroke according to its key points, width values, feature points, and curve ratios, and using the silhouette code assigned to each stroke to determine the silhouette area of the stroke that will be projected onto each pixel to define the occupied area in each pixel. The method further includes performing an anti-aliasing method to reduce jaggedness in the rendered text image by analyzing the image topography surrounding each pixel and selecting a matrix of weights to produce an optimal anti-aliasing effect."

Problems solved by technology

There are some disadvantages associated with this technique.

First, because different font outlines must be defined and stored for tens of thousands of different characters, the memory requirement is relatively high.

Second, the font outlines that are stored in high resolution are suited for display only in high resolution; they are not suited for high-quality display in relatively low resolution.

Rendering those characters defined for a binary-image screen on a gray level screen often causes severe degradation of the resulting text image.

This is particularly true with Asian characters, which tend to have relatively more complicated overall geometric shapes.

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